


Decoy

by Maker_of_Rune_Vests



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Loki (Marvel) Lives, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 12:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19229539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maker_of_Rune_Vests/pseuds/Maker_of_Rune_Vests
Summary: Written in response to the request of goblin-overlord (goblin-overlord.tumblr.com) that I write a fic in which Loki used a decoy in Infinity War.





	Decoy

“Your brother is angry,” Mantis said softly, her eyes vast. She took a step closer to where Loki sat near a window of the Guardians’ ship, her fragile antennae drooping. “He is angry that you pretended to die.”

Loki continued watching a comet shoot past them, towards an unlucky distant realm. “Thank you for informing me,” he said.

They were both well aware that Thor had shoved him against control paneling so hard that they had had to delay flight for a day to repair broken buttons and switches.

Mantis sat down beside him on the bench, folding her hands in her lap. Loki thought of rising and leaving, but decided not to. Her quiet analysis was better than listening to Drax bellow and Quill blare slightly aged Midgardian music, and it was far better than watching Thor try to usurp Quill’s leadership.

The god and the empath were silent while the comet became a spark and then vanished. Then the ship tilted and jerked back to being level, making Mantis, whose feet did not touch the floor, almost fall off the bench. Loki automatically steadied her, frowning at the shouts that accompanied and followed the leveling.

“You need to watch where we’re going!” Rocket yelled from the front. “Not watch comets!”

“I was watching!” Quill yelled back, even louder than the raccoon. “Both! I’m a trained driver!”

Loki rolled his eyes. Cacophonous fools. He heard a soft whimper and looked at Mantis, who had pressed her hands over her face. Her sudden distress baffled him, but before he had reacted in any way save opening his mouth to speak, it was gone. Her hands descended to her lap, and she looked up at him with great pity.

He raised an eyebrow.

Mantis blinked. “I feel feelings, when I touch people,” she explained, her voice quiet and fast. “And you have many feelings, feelings of sadness and–and rejection.”

Loki subtly moved farther from her on the bench. “My apologies,” he stated, unapologetically, and frowned at a distant planet. It had not been her fault that she had touched him, but she might have kept his feelings to herself. He had not known she was an empath before now.

Mantis nodded as solemnly as if his tone had been serious. “I would like to know,” she said. “What happened. Because you would not so mourn that your brother is angry, if you had meant to pretend to be dead. How did you stay alive when Thanos broke your neck?”

Her dainty eyebrows rose as she asked the question, and she touched her own neck.

Loki frowned slightly as he looked at her. She was more inquisitive than he deemed a stranger should be; but he appreciated that she presumed him innocent. “By not being the one whose neck he broke.”

“Whose neck did he break?!” Mantis asked, already almost forgetting to breathe.

“A dead warrior’s. The Titan had consecrated himself to halving.” Loki scratched his palm as if it were itchy, although it was not. “As I dare say you know.”

Mantis nodded. “He turned me into dust,” she said, too cheerfully. “It was interesting!”

Loki nodded, deciding not to react to her description. “He intended to kill Thor. But I thought it likely that if he slew me, he would spare Thor, and I was certain that he would kill me if I attempted to kill him. So I determined to stab him. I all but trod on a corpse as I went to sally forth–and conceived a better plot.”

He paused dramatically because Mantis was a wondrously riveted listener. Both her antennae were glowing with the suspense.

“I possessed a few wisps of the Eternal Flame, and I bestowed them on the dead warrior. He rose and obeyed me. I clad him in an illusion of myself, and sent him forth.”

Loki paused again, undramatically. He had seen all that his illusion had seemed to be seeing, and seen it again in nightmares. “It’s hardly necessary to relate our dialogue in detail. Suffice it to say that I implied to Thor that this was unreal, infuriated the Titan, and re-created the illusion of myself in every instant of the Titan strangling my deceased decoy.”

“So the illusion would not break,” Mantis commented sotto voce, correctly. “Why did you not let it break after the Titan left?”

“Because I could not,” Loki said, truly, and hoped both Mantis and himself could believe that. “The Titan’s high priest was a master of magic, and would not leave a fresh-fallen enemy unwatched.He would have reported my deception, and his master would have returned to ensure both my death and Thor’s.”

Mantis nodded, without skepticism. “Where did you go after it exploded? Thor was the only living person we saw when we came to help.”

“Some bit of the ship struck my head in the explosion, and when I was again conscious, I was flying through a tunnel of light and darkness.”

“I would not like to awake in such a place,” Mantis noted sympathetically. “Where did you land?”

Loki suddenly smiled. “Jotunheim, oddly enough.”

“The realm to which we are taking you.”

He nodded. “An icy realm, of which I happen to be the rightful king. I fell into a deep snowbank, and before I regained my feet was found by half a dozen Jotun hunters, who expected me to be an iron meteorite and were remarkably disappointed. They would have killed me, had I not revealed that I possessed the Casket Of Ancient Winters, which would save their realm, and which only a master of magic can wield. And thus–I am now King of Jotunheim.”

Mantis clapped enthusiastically. “You are good at surviving disasters!”

Loki laughed, both amused and pleased by her applause. “I really can’t dispute that.”

“Why didn’t you tell Thor you were alive? And why were you on Alfheim?”

“I knew not where he was, and I could not leave Jotunheim due to its utter lack of airships. As for why I was on Alfheim, we advanced last month to the point of possessing an airship constructed of native materials, and I was seeking an alliance with the Alves–alone, because Alfheim is too warm for my people. The ship perished when I attempted to leave Alfheim, and so I hired your captain to transport me home.” 

Mantis nodded, and looked at him thoughtfully, head tilted. He let her ponder whatever she was pondering.

“I am Groot! I am Groot!” came faintly from the other end of the ship.

“I’m not ‘grumpy,’” Thor answered the tree, grumpily, and Mantis leapt to her feet.

“I will tell him all of what you told me, and then he will not be angry!” she exclaimed, and darted off before Loki could stop her.

Loki sighed, and rose to find some other part of the ship to be in. Thor would not be angry with Mantis, but he would think she was unintentionally echoing lies, and would deem it his duty to be furious with his brother for “abusing the trust of the innocent,” or something of the sort.

He could hear Mantis speaking, but her voice was so quiet and she was speaking to enthusiastically that he could not tell what she was saying. As he reached the ladder to the lower deck, he heard Thor’s loud footsteps and looked back to see Mantis holding Thor’s hand and all but dragging him towards Loki. “I have made him not be angry!” she said hopefully.

Thor did not look angry, but he looked as if he was not anything else either. Loki shook his head. If Mantis had sedated Thor, this would be as useless as talking to him while he was asleep. “Thank you, but–”

“You weren’t trying to make me think you dead?” Thor asked, and Loki realized that he was not sedated. He was dumbfounded.

Loki turned to face him, deadpanning, “You’re as brilliant as ever, brother.”

“That was sarcasm,” Mantis commented, to nobody in particular, and then burst into tears.

After a moment Loki realized she was because she was holding Thor’s hand, and his expression softened. He walked towards Thor. “I did imply that I intended a renaissance.”

Thor nodded, gently pulling his hand away from Mantis, who stopped crying straightaway. “I was having a hard time focusing on details,” he said. “With my little brother about to be killed.”

Loki felt a lump rise in his throat. He hadn’t liked for Thor to call him “little brother,” but after a decade of his never calling him that….

Mantis blinked tears out of her eyes and smiled proudly as the brothers hugged. “Reconciliations are full of such happiness!” she whispered.


End file.
